


Blood Poisoning

by MyIvy



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Attempted Sexual Assault, Drugs, F/M, Kidnapping, M/M, Multi, Slavery, Suicidal Thoughts, all the terrible stuff from nuka-world, idk why mac/deacon is there
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2018-09-14
Packaged: 2019-07-11 05:32:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15965732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyIvy/pseuds/MyIvy
Summary: “I heard about some raiders out past Sunshine Tidings, in an old amusement park.""Oh, fuck me running,” said Deacon.“Preston... do you mean Nuka-World?”Nora goes to Nuka-World. Everything changes. Even war.If people want more of this let me know, otherwise it can end as is.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> comments appreciated.

“Now tell them what you _fucking_ did,” MacCready snarled, shoving Preston ahead of him at the others that were strewn about Nora’s living room in Sanctuary Hills.  
  


“Ooo, swear jar,” said Deacon happily.  
  


“What! She's cleared out raiders a million times! It's just raiders!” Preston replied, confused and on the verge of getting mad but something in MacCready's voice was scaring him.  
  


“Tell. Them.” Mac was grabbing different guns off Nora’s wall.  
  


“Preston, talk,” encouraged Piper.  
  


“I heard about some raiders out past Sunshine Tidings, in an old amusement park. They've captured a bunch of traders, too.”  
  


“ _Oh, fuck me running!_ ” said Deacon, jumping up and also heading for the armory area of Nora's house.  
  


Piper rose from her seat and grabbed Preston by the shoulders. “Preston... do you mean _Nuka-World_?”  
  


“Yeah, that’s it,” said Preston, bewildered at the flurry of sounds as Hancock, Deacon, and MacCready looked like they were preparing for war.  
  


“What’s Nuka-World?” asked Danse, a more recent newcomer to the Commonwealth as Piper went pale.  
  


“Picture Hell on Earth,” said MacCready, finally deciding he had enough guns and ammo shoved into his duffel and then opened the freezer where Nora kept her medical supplies.  
  


“It used to be a trading hub but some raiders overran it,” said Hancock. “By ‘some’ I mean a million. Raiders as far as the eye can see.”  
  


“And let me guess, you told her to enter through the transit station?” Mac growled.  
  


Preston looked around. “That’s the entrance, isn’t it?”  
  


“The ‘entrance’,” snarled MacCready, “Is a death trap.”

\----------

_Four Days Ago_

 

She was going to die here, she thought, sitting on the floor of the locker room of what she guessed was a bumper car arena.  
  


Nora had been through a lot of rough fights but this...this was the worst. It just wouldn’t end.  
  


She brought her shiny new power armor as an afterthought, thinking she’d try out some of the new mods she’d put on it.  
  


Now she was down to a chest piece and the frame, the rest of it blasted or shot or melted off of her. She had a piece of it stuck in her calf muscle, in and out but she couldn’t pull the thing out. She was sure if she did she’d pass out from the pain and she couldn’t pass out here. So she’d applied a stimpack around it just to staunch the bleeding and them Med-X for the pain.  
  


Her breath was ragged in the locker room, waiting for one more thing to appear. They were going to have her fight someone next one-on-one, normally something she’d shrug off, but she was exhausted and injured and that guy had _working_ armor that looked like it was attached to the ceiling of this bumper car place.  
  


She was going to die here, it kept repeating in her head. She was going to die. Here. In this place. Far from anyone that cared about her. Surrounded by animals.  
  


That fucking announcer. If she got out of this, he’d be the first one she fucking killed.  
  


The intercom crackled to life and she shut her eyes, ready for more gloating. Or for Colter whoever to tell her the match was about to start. He’d only given her a second.  
  


“All right, listen the hell up if you want to make it out of this alive. I've only got a minute. Find the intercom on the wall. I'll make it quick.”  
  


She hit the intercom button, half expecting to be electrocuted. “Who is this?” she said, surprised her voice wasn’t weepy.  
  


“I'm the guy that's going to get you out of this alive, so listen up.”  
  


“What the hell is this place?” she demanded.  
  


“You make it through this alive, I’ll explain everything.”  
  


This exchange ended with her armed with a fucking squirt gun. Nora had said all sorts of plucky things to him. Even when he said a slightly too low-voiced _‘my kinda gal’_ to her. But inside she was trembling. They’d put her through Hell. They’d even discovered all new things like a fucking gas she’d never seen before.  
  
She was running on some guy’s “I’m Not that Big of a Dick” assurance. But it was all she had. Honestly, she would have thought of using water too, she had some on her, but a squirt gun was a lot better than chucking a can of water and hoping it landed right.  
  


“Death! Death! Death!” The crowd was screaming.  
  


“And you, are you ready to die?”  
  


Nora drew in a shaky breath, palm sweaty in her glove as she held the squirt gun. No, she wasn’t.  
  


“Let’s do this!”  
  


The door swung open and she was in the bumper car arena. It seemed like he had a hard time telling where she was, which made sense because his stupid armor was blocking his face from the front. Protective, but how did he see?  
  


Crowd screaming overhead, she dodged behind one of the cars and after gathering up her nerves to shoot him with the squirt gun. It felt ridiculous and like nothing was happening and then there was an audible down turn of the electric hum of his armor and the sparks stopped flying.  
  


Intercom guy hadn’t lied! It worked!  
  


She had a chance now and she was going to take it.  
  


Nora revved her Ripper. Her customized Ripper was called The Harvester and it was built for carving power armor off of people. She felt bullets cut into her shoulder but she grabbed the barrel of her opponent’s gun, shoving it to the side for her Ripper to do its bloody work.  
  


Whats-his-face was shrieking as she sawed through the power armor’s left arm and then his own left arm, sparks and blood and sweat flying.  
  


There was a lot of screaming, until it was white noise in her ears, mixed into the white noise of the crowd. Nora knew some of the sweat wasn’t from this fight but from her own pain receptors freaking out.  
  


_Please let the drugs last a bit longer._   
  


Colter (Coller? Cotter?) caught his second wind and slammed her into one of the bumper cars. She fell into the seat and some part of her power armor frame was wedged beneath the wheel. He hammered away at her with a Power Fist and she heard the metal of her frame screaming. It was going to give.  
  


He was telling her in his cockney accent that he was going to fuck her corpse after this. She heard the tell-tale hum when the Power Fist went into recharge mode.  
  


“Have fun with that,” she said through gritted teeth, slamming her switchblade into the shoulder with the Power Fist. She got a shriek out of him and then she worked her Harvester into him again. It found his chest piece, shearing it off.  
  


Sparks. Blood.  
  


It felt like it took hours but it was probably only a couple minutes of them hammering at each other. She’d gotten him down to her level. No more power armor, no Power Fist. Just the two of them staggering after one another with whatever weapons.  
  


Whoever this fuck was, he wasn’t actually good at fighting. He was used to cheating.  
  


Hand-to-hand, Nora had the height on him, the reach. She could do this. She could do this now.  
  


That was the last thing she remembered before she realized his face was a mashed pumpkin on the floor of the arena and Colter wasn’t going to bother her.  
  


“He’s dead, girl,” said that voice from the intercom.  
  


It was over. Her Power Frame was busted, her leg was busted, her shoulder was numb and she was terrified of what it would feel like once the drugs wore off.  
  


Nora’s leg was screaming but she forced herself to stand. She couldn’t show weakness right now. Fight. She had to keep fighting. Get ready for the wave of raiders.  
  


“Gage, what the hell just happened?” said that disc jockey sounding asshole.  
  


“What’d I tell you, worked like a charm,” said the man with a metal eye patch on the other side of the glass that encased this arena.  
  


She guessed this was Gage. The door opened but no raiders were coming. No one was coming.  
  


“I know a lot of stuff is comin’ at you all at once,” he was saying as he led her back to some viewing area where he must have been watching her be nearly murdered for the past few hours. She collapsed on a couch, trembling. Did she have to fight him now? Drugs, she needed more drugs for this.  
  


But he squatted down beside her.  
  


“You need to be able to walk on your own feet, no one can see you limpin’ or this wont work,” he said, grimacing as he looked at her leg. “You stimpacked it before gettin’ this out, huh?”  
  


“I would have bled out,” she growled, shivering with the pain already.  
  


“I’m gonna do something real painful to you,” he said, wiping his mouth. He took off a glove and handed it to her. “Bite on this.”  
  


\----

 

Nora’s pupils must have been pinpricks by the time they got to the “Fizztop Grille”, shaking with  the drugs Gage had propped her up with to keep her conscious but not screaming on the walk there. The memory alone of the pain that he’d inflicted on her made her icy.  
  


Still, she hadn’t missed that people were calling her ‘boss’ now. What the hell?  
  


She gave a small whimper as she hit the mattress of her new bed, suddenly aware of how she was covered in sweat, the universe spinning.  
  


What the fuck was happening? Why didn’t anything make sense? Why hadn’t these raider fucks torn her apart?  
  


Gage checked her leg over. There was a seam in her flesh where he’d pulled the piece of her armor from. But her whole body was in shock, it was just too much to go through in so short of time. You weren’t supposed to stack stimpacks on top of each other and then pile on Jet, Psycho and Buffout. You weren’t supposed to fight mirelurks, be torn to shreds by turrets, outrun grenades, and get roasted by flamethrowers either. And then you weren’t supposed to have some piece of metal ripped out of you and then get shot full of even more drugs.  
  
She narrowed her eyes at him as he kept almost touching.  
  


“You’re a real hard lady. You know I know a bit about you. You lead the Minutemen, don’t you? I dunno why you’d waste all that talent with a buncha has-beens.”  
  


“Fuck you,” she spat. She still had a boot knife on her. She might die on this mattress but she’d fuck him up before she did. She’d make sure the devil himself wouldn’t recognize him.  
  


No.  
  


None of that was true. She couldn’t fight him. She was woozy and weak and a toddler could have kicked her ass right now.  
  


“Heh. Sorry. But that’s a good thing in this case. You got experience as a leader. People know you, too.”  
  


“On the way here, through the marketplace, people were calling me ‘boss’...” she said slowly, head banging on the inside of her skull.  
  


“Yeah. About that. You’re what’s called an Overboss now.”  
  


Nora listened in stunned silence as the mohawked man explained in his drawl about the three different groups of raiders that somehow she was in charge of because she’d survived some impossible nightmare.  
  


“No thank you,” she said, trying to get up off the bed and failing. Idiot. Of course you can’t walk. You can barely lay here.  
  


“Sorry, you don’t have a choice,” said Gage, gathering her up in powerful arms from the floor and setting her back down on the bed. “See, me and the others have been working to get rid of that fuck for a long time. If there’s no Overboss, these animals will tear each other apart-”  
  


“Good,” Nora snapped. She just had to recover from the incredible amount of drugs coursing through her veins and then she could get out of here.  
  


“No,” he said patiently. “Bad. Think of it this way. You’re a princess here. A figurehead. This is all diplomacy. You just gotta get people to work together. I hear you’re good at that.”  
  


She _was_ good at that.

  
And she hated it.  
  


It was killing her. She had just wanted her baby back. And somehow she’d become the leader of the free Commonwealth, running around cleaning out building after building of the filth and danger. Constantly being pulled on one mission after another. It was like no one had ever arrived in this place and been capable before. She had to tell them everything, teach them everything.  
  


And now this man was saying she was the leader of the not-very-free Commonwealth. No.  
  


No. No more. She couldn’t take any more.  
  


“Now. You rest up, I’m gonna bring you some grub, give you another hit of Med-X and then you’re gonna go meet the other bosses.”

  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sorry for dumping on Preston!!!

_Three Days Ago:_

She was hopelessly outnumbered. She straight up asked the raider leaders how many they each had and then compensated for what must have been inflations. 

But still. She was out numbered. 

Mason, the leader of The Pack, made it clear he wanted to fuck her. She’d just started at him blankly until he got nervous and changed the subject. She’d found when she tried to make no expression at all, it ended up looking extremely threatening. 

And even if she hadn’t been outnumbered by about a hundred-to-one with no power armor, there were the slaves. 

Gage explained to her that he collars she’d seen on some people indicated they were slaves and that they would explode if they ‘misbehaved’. They were traders but also somehow slaves, she couldn’t understand that dynamic there. 

And something was wrong with her leg. 

It hurt. It hurt all the time. She couldn’t fight or even walk if she didn’t have a dose of Med-X. And she couldn’t sleep unless she had another. And it had to be Gage to inject it. Because no one else could know she had a weakness as Gage expressly reminded her. She wanted to leave. To leave and come back and wipe this place off the map. Come back with a fucking battalion of Minutemen. With some Gen 2 synths from The Institute, too while she was at it. She could convince the board that it was necessary to wipe them out, she was sure.

But she couldn’t.

Gage had made it pretty clear she wasn’t allowed to go, that he’d blow the heads off a handful of traders if she did. And he’d taken her Pip-Boy so she couldn’t use the relay to pop out when he wasn’t looking, ask for help, then pop back into place. Without her Pip-Boy, would she even be able to find her way out of here? 

“You did good today. Just make everyone play nice, and at the end of the day I’ll be here to give you your dose. You just have to be a good girl for me,” he said, walking his hand up her bare calf. She flinched a little at his touch. The Med-X kept the pain at bay but if he squeezed there it would definitely make her yell.  

She wasn’t addicted to Med-X yet. Maybe. She couldn’t tell without her fucking Pip-Boy but she might as well be considering the amount of pain that spiked when she didn’t have her dose on time. And Gage had bought all the Med-X around so she couldn’t get any on her own. If she did get out of here, she’d make it maybe half a day before needing another dose. She’d have to hope in that time she’d made it to a settlement with Med-X and not encountered anything on her way that would kill her. And hope they hadn’t sent anyone after her. 

“You an’ me don’t have to be like this, boss. With the lights out, I’m not half bad lookin’,” he joked. “I got a _knowledgeable_ tongue, too.” 

“No thanks,” she said, finally feeling like the Med-X had set in enough where she could walk again and gingerly getting up off the bed. 

“Boss,” he said softly as she headed towards the bathroom to clean up. The pain made her sweat _so much_. “You know I’m being real polite by askin’ right? Because when that pain hits, you’re gonna be beggin’ for it if it means getting a hit.” 

Yeah. 

She knew.

 

\----------------

 

“Well, this is her,” said Deacon, stating the obvious for everyone. Outside the transit center was a pile of dead Gunners and an Assaultron. 

MacCready and Piper appeared from where they’d been checking out the transit center itself. “She definitely took the train,” said Piper. “It’s left the station.” 

“Are we absolutely sure she took it to this park?” said Danse. He was unrecognizable with all that face paint and raider-style decoration on his armor. 

Piper dug in her bag and withdrew a neat little stack of plastic plates. “Knew you’d ask.” 

“Ohh, trash! Her favorite,” said Deacon adoringly. 

When discarding things, Nora always left them in a neat pile. Something else better had caught her eye and she’d left these behind. It’d helped them more than once to find her. 

“Weird little hoarder,” murmured Piper fondly at the stack before setting it down on top of a car. 

“C’mon. We’re almost there, just to the south west now,” said MacCready, pulling his bandanna up over his mouth again, missing his hat fiercely. 

Deacon had gone all out to disguise each of them as raiders or traders or raider-traders. Piper still looked a little too cute but none of them could figure out how to change that, even when they shaved off some of her hair. 

“Shit,” hissed Hancock as they approached, a post with arrow shaped signs told them they were almost to Nuka Town USA but the body parts strapped to it told them they were close to raider country. 

They spent a good amount of time staring at it to make really, really sure it wasn’t her. 

“I’m going to kill Preston,” said MacCready as they went ahead again, in a voice that was too flat not to be taken seriously. 

“S’not his fault, Mac,” said Hancock. He was wearing a knit cap and dressed like a provisioner. It was surprising how much he didn’t look like himself once you took away the hat and ancient frock coat. 

“It is,” replied MacCready. 

“She wouldn’t like you gettin’ mad at him for it, though,” said Hancock. “Anyway, if anyone’s killing him, it’d be me. And I say leave him.” 

Mac frowned and looked at him. “Why you?” 

“Because I’m madly in love with her.” 

Mac stopped dead in his tracks. “You are?” 

“Like, love-love?” Piper asked. 

“Yeah,” said Hancock, nodding a little and withdrawing a cigarette, he had a hard time finding his lighter because these weren’t his usual clothes. 

“Does she know?” asked Danse. 

“I dunno. Probably. She seems to know about stuff before most people,” he said, using his leadership skills to subtly get the team to start moving again. 

“Well we _all_ love her,” Mac said quickly, neck feeling hot. 

“Yeah but I love her like, love-song love her,” Hancock said easily. “I’d give up chems for her.” 

“I love Mac!” declared Deacon happily, putting an arm around the mercenary’s shoulders. 

“Shut up, Deacon!” MacCready said, squirming away from him. 

“That’s so sweet,” Piper was murmuring to Hancock. “How long have you known?” 

“Almost since she walked into Goodneighbor.” 

Piper made a face. “That’s just looks, Hancock!” 

“Hey, just listen a sec. I knifed this guy for hassling her and she looked like I’d gotten her a basket of kittens. She was just so touched it was cute. And she didn’t flinch. With the face and all. No hesitation whatsoever, I’d never seen that before.” 

“...That is a bit romantic,” Piper admitted.

 

\----------

 

Gage was late and Nora was sweating and sobbing into a pillow. 

_Fucking Preston._

How could he do this to her? She knew it was the pain that was making her furious and unfair. 

But Deacon wouldn’t have done this. He would have gotten more intel, he would have warned her, she could have brought more people.  

Before he was exiled, Danse would have made sure she had a whole squad. The Brotherhood almost certainly didn’t know this place existed. 

MacCready and Piper would have said ‘no’ and Mac would have probably laughed. 

Hancock? Hancock would have gone with her, angry as shit and wanting to tear the place to bloody shreds. 

_Fuck Hancock,_ she thought. 

How was she on so many crusades with so many crusaders? Why was this fucked up wasteland her responsibility? 

More than anyone, Nora wished X6 was here. He never asked anything of her. She didn’t have to pay him, she didn’t have to be commanding, she didn’t have to be entertaining or solving a case or anything. He didn’t want her gun or even an adventure. He didn’t want anything from her. The Institute wanted things but he didn’t. 

She wanted to convince him of his humanity more than anything. How could he not know? He was so sweet to her. There was no way he could be ‘programmed’ to squeeze her hand when she was upset. 

He was tasked with protecting her. He wasn’t tasked with being gentle with her when she was injured, with speaking in a soft voice. 

That said he was kind of an asshole. 

She’d laughed when she first heard him call someone a peasant, it was so damn _mean_ and said so plainly it had looped back around to hilarious. 

Unlike the others, he never wanted her to do anything for other people. 

_“You’re going to be The Director of The Institute. None of this is fitting for you.”_

He was the only one that wanted her to stay safe, wished she’d just be at The Institute. 

When she took something on, he pushed to make sure she was compensated. When someone was rude to her, he prickled. 

_“You don't owe anyone an apology.”_

“Honey, I’m home,” called  Gage sardonically as he entered. 

“Where were you?” she half-sobbed, half-yelled. 

“Lost track of time. Lucky I checked my Pip-Boy when I did.” 

_Her_ Pip-Boy. 

He sidled up and despite knowing he was going to dose her, that he had what she wanted, she flinched back a little. 

“Shhh,” he said, taking her chin in is hand. “Thought you’d be happier to see me. You don’t want this?” 

“I want it,” she said through tears and gritted teeth. 

“Say ‘please’.” 

“Please,” she said, shuddering now from the pain. 

“Good girl,” he said, letting go of her chin and finally injecting her leg. 

She sobbed in relief.

 


	3. Chapter 3

Nuka-World, at least this part of it, seemed coated in dust. It kicked up as they headed in, forming a cloud at their waists.

“This place is disgusting,” Danse said under his breath, watching coldly as a raider harassed a trader with a collar on, playing Keep Away with their broom.

“We just have to be here long enough to find out where her body is,” said MacCready. He jerked his head at a raider in a lounge chair. He had green, spiky hair and an antler helm, his body smeared with pink paint. “Hey. When was the last Gauntlet run? I miss anything good?” Deacon and MacCready were the ones who’d been chosen to do the talking. Deacon because he was good at playing raider and Mac because he was the only one that had been here before.

The raider laughed at him. “Fuck me, man. You missed the best one ever. Someone fucking killed Colter!”

Deacon burst out laughing and MacCready wasn’t sure it was cover or real relief because he fucking felt relieved. Of course she had. He wanted to cry.

“Oh yeah? Then what? I never knew what happened if you win that.”

“The bosses were so impressed, they made her the new Overboss.”

“What!” squawked Piper.

“Yeah, I know right?” said the raider. “Lotta’ people are pissed about it but I’m down. Who cares? Colter was a shit head, she can’t be worse than him.”

“I wanna see her,” said Deacon. “She hot?”

“Oh. Fuck yes. I only saw her once when she came to see Mason, but holy shit. I think she’s from a Vault because she’s got that look to her, you know? The skin?” Vault dwellers tended to have much nicer skin and generally looked healthier. That glow was down right seductive for a lot of wasters.

This raider and Deacon then proceeded to say the dirtiest things MacCready had ever heard about Nora and women in general, much of it concerning how they’d come on various parts of her body and the pros and cons of combining recreational drugs with fucking. Some of the slang he’d never heard before. The fuck was ‘clunge’?

But this discussion confirmed it really was Nora that had made it through the gauntlet. Not a lot of tall women with broad shoulders and flawless dark Vault skin.

“I gotta see this bitch,” grinned Deacon.

“Well. She’s not out much. I mean, not down here. She goes into the other bits of the park. I dunno what she’s doing in there,” he shrugged. Mostly she’s up there,” he pointed at the top of some faux mountain. “Fizztop Grille. But I dunno if you can just get in to see her for no reason. I don’t think Gage would let you up.”

“Who’s Gage?” asked MacCready.

“He’s like...her right hand man? He was Colter’s bitch, now he’s hers I guess. She sends him down here to get drugs and shit for her.”

Drugs? Nora didn’t use drugs except when she was in a tough fight. That sounded like Gage was lying about that.

“Yeah, so your best bet is waiting for her to come out of her princess tower there. Trust me, you’ll know her when you see her, she’s got the most lush looking power armor I’ve ever seen.”

That did sound like Nora.

They ended up just setting up camp at the base of the tower, around near what might have been a merchandise booth. From there they had a clear view of the door and external elevator to the Fizztop Grille.

“I can’t believe she’s alive...” MacCready said, stunned. He wiped at his eyes. Maybe from the dust.

“I didn’t doubt for a second,” Deacon said, thrilled.

“But guys, why is she still here then?” asked Piper, lowering her voice. “With these animals? She’s got her thingee. The lightning thingee.” The Institute Relay.

“The drugs that raider mentioned,” said Danse. “Maybe someone got her hooked.”

“But that wouldn’t keep her here,” said MacCready. “She’d just come home. Use that Institute thing like Piper said.”

“She can't leave,” said Hancock.”Look at this place. Slaves. She can't leave them like that. She’s probably trying to figure out how to help them.” Hancock was right. Nora had risked her life for people in less dire situations. She was altruistic to a fault.

“But she’s supposed to be in charge,” said Danse, furrowing his brow. “Can’t she just...command them to free the traders?”

“Depends on the dynamics here. Maybe they’d all rebel if she did that. She’s outnumbered. She steps wrong, looks weak, they’ll kill her,” Hancock hypothesized, lighting up a cigarette. MacCready guessed he actually wanted some Jet but was trying to keep his head clear for this. “And if someone finds out she’s a sweetheart, they’ll be using the slaves to blackmail her.”

Piper waved her hands a little, making MacCready grimace at how cute and not raider-like at all she was. “Okay. Okay. Whatever the circumstances are don’t matter. We just have to wait for her to come out of that place. That’s it. She’ll explain everything and tell us what to do. In the meantime we should start figuring out how we could clean out this place.”

MacCready looked up at the Fizztop Grille. She was so close. Right there.

Alive.

_Two Days Ago_

She wasn’t a religious person, but now she was praying, bargaining. If there was a god, or even just a devil, she’d do anything to just leave. For someone to come and take her away from this.

From this, yet another place that needed her. And all over Nuka-World was need.

Every separate “world” of this park was another Hell she had to see, had to stomach.

Like the park of ghouls who weren’t fucking hurting anyone, that she wished she had left alone. A lone man protecting them, a glowing one who hadn’t lost his mind. She’d convinced him to go looking for his long lost lover and felt like the worst scum in the world.

Like where she was now, a world of hostile robots that had killed a bunch of traders. How tired was she of finding people’s dead bodies. The poor Brahmin, too. She always got upset when she saw a murdered Brahmin. The big creatures were so gentle and sweet and did so much for the Commonwealth.

Big dumb animals that were helpful. That was her, too, wasn’t it. She climbed into one of the rocket ships on some defunct ride, resting. She’d killed most of the robots and shut down the others.

_You should just eat your gun._

That was just the pain talking, she knew it was. But the pain was sounding more and more convincing. Even with the Med-X doses it was always there. Why? What had she done to her leg?

And the only person that could come and take her away was X6-88. But he had no idea she needed him, he was just puttering around The Institute or dragging poor synths back to The Institute to be fucking brain wiped.

And again, even if X6 arrived for some reason, Gage would kill some of the traders.

X6 wouldn’t even be able to find her, he found her by her Pip-Boy and Gage had her Pip-Boy.

_I'm going to die here._

No. Sooner or later the others would need her for some fucking thing and come looking for her, thinking she sure was taking too long on this little task.

_Fuck._

And then she’d be going back to all of that. The unending waves of everyone needing her.

Needing and needing.

What about what she needed?

She needed her baby back. But she had her baby. And he was a cold stranger that had watched her struggle, nearly die so many times, be knocked unconscious, withstand nights terrified and alone and cold. He’d watched her like a rat in a maze, just idly curious if she’d make it to him.

She hiccuped and popped the cap off a bottle of Nuka Bombdrop, downing it, letting it take the edge off of things, reenergize her.

 _Up. Get up,_ she told herself, rising.

She climbed out of the rocket ship and checked the sun. It was getting late. She had to head back.

To Gage.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> two chapters today! Please. Comments.
> 
> let me know if you want me to draw a certain part of it too.

“Hey,” said a raider, one of the Operators gang, sidling up to the bar where MacCready was drinking. “You here alone? Because I’d like to take a bite out of you,” he said, dropping his voice at the end.

Deacon materialized from nothingness, palming the man’s face and shoving. “This one’s taken. Fuck off before I fuck you with your own jaw bones.” The raider looked like he wanted to start a fight but Piper stood up from her place at the bar, obviously in Deacon’s corner. Three on one wasn’t good odds.

“Fuck you,” the raider muttered as he turned to retreat.

MacCready had been very close to murdering that fuck and causing all sorts of trouble. He wasn’t used to handling something like that in a non-violent manner and his mind had blanked on any other options. Deacon kissed his temple, arm thrown around his neck. “Mine.”

And then he gave his ear lobe a nip.

MacCready tried not to balk, he was supposed to be “Deacon’s” since he'd just _fucking_ said that, it wouldn’t look right if he hissed and spit at him. But he wasn’t used to this kind of pretend and his compromise was to freeze. He knew he was just saying ‘mine’ and biting him because it was a raider-y thing to do. He knew that.

“Pipes was right, huh? Everyone wants your sweet ass,” he whispered against his ear.

“That was one guy,” MacCready complained. “That doesn’t mean anything. They think anything with good teeth is a catch.” Deacon’s breath was tickling the shell of his ear, making his neck and ears redden.

“I chased off three others already with looks and hand gestures,” he said and MacCready wasn’t sure if he was joking or not. “Face it, Bobby, you’re the belle of the ball.”

“Most messed up game in the world.” MacCready didn’t really get that phrase, but he figured it had something to do with a ball game where the bell signaled a special part of the game. Like a point or foul or something.

“What?” asked Deacon in confusion.

“What?” replied Mac in more confusion.

“Nevermind,” said Deacon. “Let’s head back, I think we got everything we could today.

Deacon, Piper, and MacCready had all set out to find more information about each gang.

There were three gangs in the park: The Operators, The Disciples, and The Pack.

The Operators were interested in the finer things in life, dressing in houndstooth and paisley suits. They liked money and there was a rumor that they liked abducting raiders from other gangs, though no one was sure why they would. Deacon got very bad vibes from them.

And the The Disciples. They were mostly women and mostly preferred blades to anything else. They were fast, too and generally known as the best fighters of Nuka-World. They seemed to just want to murder as far as MacCready could determine.

The Pack had styled themselves after animals with Alpha type rankings. (Which wasn't a real thing in nature, Piper pointed out in distaste.) They had dogfights going on at all hours and Piper was fairly certain they were feeding people to their animals.

That had left Danse, who was terrible at pretending to be anything, and Hancock who might have some prejudice chucked at him for being a ghoul, to watch for Nora.

“I’m guessing no sign of her?” said Piper as they approached Danse and Hancock, as they weren’t sitting with a Nora nor looking happy.

“We have spotted 0 angels in power armor,” Hancock sighed.

Deacon ran a hand through his not-hair. “I was really hoping she’d have shown up by now...”

“Any ideas, _boss_?” said Piper. Deacon was the “boss” of their “gang” since he was the only one that could do the talking when they got cornered by smarter raiders, slipping seamlessly into their slang and cadences.

“I dunno, Pipes,” said Deacon. “From what we saw today, these aren’t your run of the mill raiders. They’re hard as fuck, like little cults, too. They I’d say there’s about...one hundred twenty. It’s hard to keep count.”

One hundred twenty. Danse shut his eyes. “With Nora that’s twenty for each of us. If it was twenty regular raiders I’d say we could do it. A couple stimpacks each. But with this many....They’ll be in defended positions. They’ll know the terrain better. They have better armor and firepower than normal raiders. I estimate we’d lose at least half of us.”

MacCready pointed up at the tower that held their princess. “If a couple of us could get up there, pick people off, chuck down grenades?”

Danse considered.”There's the risk of getting trapped. But generally we do want a fortified position.”

“We should have brought Preston...maybe Nick,” murmured Piper.

“Fuck Preston and Nick is literally not capable of passing for a raider,” said MacCready.

Hancock held up his hand. “We leave with Nora, come back with her Minutemen. How's that?”

\-----

_Two Days Ago_

_Fuck the Minutemen._

_Fuck the Railroad._

_Fuck The Brotherhood._

Every angry throb of pain sent another angry thought as she sat panting in an armchair.

Gage was late. Again.

_He's doing it on purpose._

She shut her eyes. The pain is in your head, it's just a sensation you can ignore.

Nope. No. Fuck that. It hurt. It hurt and it wouldn't end. It would never end. Until Gage came back.

When the door opened, she gave a shuddering moan.

“Happy to see me?”

“Please,” she heard herself say.

“Ohh, now that’s what I like,” he crooned, coming to her. Leaning over her in the chair, crowding her, he cupped the side of her face and brushed his thumb over her lips. “Anyone ever tell you how nice your mouth would look-- Fuck!” She’d bitten into the soft part of his hand between thumb and forefinger. Balling her hand, she hit him across the face, furious.

No, not today. Today she’d just seen a fucking child who’d somehow become a caveman because he was abandoned. She’d been nearly bitten in two by packs of monsters. She’d been clawed and mauled so many times she’d needed eight stimpacks. All for the fucking degenerate, slave-holding, torturing scum that called this place home.

She was not going to let fucking Gage fucking molest her on top of that.

Gage punched her back. Hard. She felt blood spurt out of her mouth onto the chair she was still sitting in. He landed another hit in her stomach, knocking the air from her in a gasp. No. She was too tired for this, what had she done?

While she was still trying to breathe, _he grabbed her leg_.

He grabbed her _leg_.

She couldn’t even scream, it came out so small in a wheeze as she clawed the arm of the couch. It was too much. Too much pain, she couldn’t stand it, her nerves were clawing her to death.

Gage punched her again across the face, she couldn’t feel it though, not against the raging white noise of the rest of her agony.

Gage was saying something to her, about how she’d better not do that again, calling her a little bitch, but she couldn’t hear him.

All she could hear was the pain.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is pretty rough!!! Sorry!!!

_One day ago_

He’d left Nora on the ground. She didn’t sleep. She couldn’t without another dose.

Without her Pip-Boy she had no idea what the time was. It was dark out though.

Her leg was rage storm.

Why hadn’t he killed her?

Why hadn’t he just raped her like he obviously fucking wanted to do?

_He wants you to beg for it._

Really? Really? That took a special kind of sadist, didn’t it?

She’d seen a lot of fucking sadists since she’d woken up in this place.

_Your child is a fucking sadist._

That repeated a couple times. What was the point? What was the point of any of this?

This was her life now? How many more times would something else horrible like this happen?

There was a lot of repetition of these thoughts, the pain making her go in a slow spiral.

She couldn’t cry, she was all cried out. She just wanted it to end.

Footsteps approached.

_Gage._

Gage was coming and she was relieved.

He nudged her shoulder with his boot. “You wanna say anything?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, quaking. “I’m very sorry.”

“Yeah, I figured,” he said, gathering her up and putting her in the armchair again. And cupped her face. Again. He pushed his thumb over her lips. Again.

“Open your mouth.”

She did it.

“Open your legs.”

She did that, too.

He nodded. “Good. I’m going to go shower. Then you’re going to fuck me.”

Then finally, finally he injected her with the Med-X.

“See how easy things are when you just play nice?”

Sick fucking prick. He’d left her here to freak out while he showered. The hell was wrong with him? She was disgusting, always covered in sweat from the wracking the pain gave her. Fucking fuck. Her mind ran out of words.

She stared off into the middle distance. There was no point to this. What did it matter? Did she really need to do this? Suffer this?

Gage had said he had a killswitch for the traders he’d picked out.

So she couldn’t kill him.

Gage came back in a towel. Rather the towel was around his shoulders. Grimacing, she looked away.

“Shy?” He approached and she did look at him then, glaring.

She’d made up her mind. This was the end.

She was going to make Gage kill her.

She was going to die here.

\------

“I can’t fucking take this,” said Hancock. MacCready wasn’t sure if he was talking about Nora not coming down or needing Jet. They’d been there for more than a day and a half now.

“I don’t like this,” said Deacon. They weren’t alone in watching the tower. They’d heard that the Bosses hadn’t heard from her in a while either. Or that guy Gage. People were getting anxious. “This place is a powder keg.”

“This is bullshit,” said a woman’s voice, striding past. They all looked up to see a woman in a helm that covered most of her face. Her name was Nisha and she was the leader of the Disciples. She was flanked by a man and a woman, both of whom were twirling knives at their hips.

She stormed up to the doors of the tower and walked in.

A few minutes later she came back out again and was barking things at people that MacCready couldn’t make out.

“What is she-”

“She told them to get the hooker...?” murmured Deacon, staring hard at Nisha. MacCready realize he was reading her lips.

“‘The hooker’?” repeated Piper.

They didn’t have to wonder long. A few Disciples came over, carrying a huge gun with a massive harpoon like thing coming out of it, but it had grappling type hooks as well. The man following Nisha around shot it up at the exterior elevator which was a repurposed window washing platform. The grapple locked around one bar of it, trailing a rope that Nisha grabbed onto and started climbing, her two attendants following close behind.

“The internal elevator,” said Piper. “It must not be working or something.”

MacCready blinked at her for figuring it out. He’d been bewildered by all of this.

Nisha and her party managed to scale the thing and as they did, MacCready noticed more and more raiders from the different gangs arriving, jostling to get closer, murmuring.

After an agonizing ten minutes, Nisha and the other two reemerged, but this time from the front door at the base of the tower.

“Did they get the elevator working?” asked Hancock.

Nisha barked at the two behind her. “Dixie! Savoy! Make sure no one goes up there! I’ll be back.”

As soon as Nisha left the area at the base of Fizztop Mountain, raiders were pushing and shoving but giving the door and Dixie and Savoy in front of it a wide berth. Someone would be pushed forward and immediately gutted.

“Come on,” said MacCready. “We can take two assholes that a bunch of other people are boxing in. Danse, make a path if you’d be so kind,” he asked, putting his bandana over his mouth and jogging ahead, the others following quickly behind.

A little weird for him. He was never in front. Why was he in front? He pulled back in time for Danse to dash past and bowl in, sending people flying.

Hancock jerked his chin at Savoy in greeting. “Hey.” He put the barrel of his shotgun to Savoy's kneecap and pulled the trigger.

“Get out of the fucking way,” suggested Piper as she hauled on Dixie’s stupid mask and shoved her down into the throng where she was caught up by trampling legs.

MacCready dove for the door, hauling it open and falling inside. Piper fell over him but quickly recovered. Deacon snatched him up off the ground and they booked it for the elevator, Piper hitting the button, making the worn elevator rattle open.

“Danse!” Piper said. Danse wouldn’t fit in the elevator with all of them. And where was Hancock?

“Go!” yelled Danse. “Get Nora!”

Piper slammed the button. As the cheerful music in the elevator played she let out a choked, strange sob.

MacCready understood. Something about this made him feel sick. Something that was obvious, staring him in the face. Why did it feel like dread and not relief?

The door to the Fizztop Grille was wide open and MacCready knew, knew when the smell hit him. He knew that smell.

“Where...” he couldn’t see anything, there was a massive counter and wooden barriers that obscured everything. He felt hands on his shoulders.

Deacon.

“Don’t. _Don’t_ ,” he was saying softly, hauling him backwards, back through the door as Piper went forward into the room.

“Honey? Nora?” MacCready could hear her voice cracking. _“Nora?”_

“No!” he thrashed in Deacon’s arms.

“Bobby, don’t!” Deacon was yelling as he got free, running back into the room.

He heard Piper weeping. “Oh, honey, no, honey,” she was saying over and over.

Up on a sort of platform made of wooden shack material was a bed. At the foot of the bed was a dead man, naked, covered in energy blast wounds, one going clean through his head.

And on the bed there was a half-naked woman laying in a dried black spread of blood, one of her wrists shackled to the head board, the other cradling a laser pistol.

And while her face was a ruin she had beautiful, Vault-dweller skin.


	6. Chapter 6

Danse and Hancock came up the elevator soon enough, but not after a few waves of raiders made their way up, Deacon and Piper managing to handle them easily enough. The elevator made a perfect kill box.

Meanwhile, MacCready was barely keeping it together as he carefully put Nora’s breasts back into her bra and pulled down the blood soaked shirt back to normalcy. Then he tucked her arms up onto her lap, the arm with her busted Pip-Boy weighing more than the other and wanting to drift off her. He wrapped Nora’s body in a blanket, which wasn’t fucking clean, nothing was clean in this place, but it couldn’t be helped.

Dead. She really was dead. He’d thought, secretly, if anyone could make it through the gauntlet, it would be her, but he hadn’t said anything aloud, not wanting to jinx it. And when it turned out she had, that she’d become Queen of the Raiders, that seemed natural, really.

_Of course she had. Of course._

Of course Nora would conquer them like she had conquered The Evil Institute. Of course.

But she hadn’t. They’d finally done it, they’d finally asked for something The Amazing Nora couldn’t do.

Something she couldn’t survive.

But she’d taken that guy with her.

“Good for you,” he murmured, picking her up. She was heavy, always bigger than him, but he wanted to get her away from this room.

Piper and Deacon had halted Danse and Hancock from going in, frantically trying to brace them for the impact.

Hancock’s usually apricot skin was drained when MacCready emerged with her. He backed up as MacCready came closer.

Hancock’s knees gave out. Danse lowered his head.

“We have to get out of here,” said Deacon. “I know this is bad. It’s the worst. But Nora would want us to get out of here alive. I know weren’t prepared for this, especially without Nora but Pipes, you get that suit of power armor in there, Mac you find the guns and Hancock, you get your shit together. Take whatever drug you need but get on your feet because another wave of raiders is coming up that elevator. Hancock!”

Hancock seemed to snap out of it with a start, looking up at Deacon like he’d suddenly appeared.

“She’d want you to live so you’re going to fucking live. Get up.”

 

\-------

 

It could have been hours or a few minutes. MacCready had no idea, he only knew time in the number of waves of raiders that came up out of the elevator.

It was twenty waves. Twenty. They’d run low on ammo and with every pile of bodies they racked up they had to frantically rearm themselves with what they found. Danse at least seemed to have a million fusion cells.

On and on in a loop. Elevator ding. Raiders. Bullets. Blood. Reload. Elevator ding. Raiders. Bullets. Blood. Reload.

Sometimes reload time had to be stimpak time.

And then around the sixteenth wave the number of raiders became smaller and smaller.

And then they stopped.

And it was over.

And the five of them left Nuka-World the way they’d come, having accomplished what Nora would have wanted. They’d freed the traders, freed this place of raiders.

Danse and Piper took turns carrying their shrouded hero.

“I think I loved her,” said MacCready quietly as they walked.

Deacon nodded a little. “Yeah, you did.”

 

_One day ago:_

“Put those cuffs on. Through the headboard,” he said, tossing her a pair of handcuffs and pointing at the bed,

She did, her hands now above her head.

Gage disappeared and came back, latching her Pip-Boy on his arm and then messing with it for a bit.

He saw her looking and smiled a little. “Recording. For the memories.”

This fucking son of a bitch.

The fucking raider came to her and pulled up the dress shirt she was wearing, something she’d gotten as a present from The Operators. He yanked it up to her chin and pulled down at her bra until her breasts came out the top of the cups.

After appraising her for a moment, Gage got on the bed and stood over her, gripping the headboard, he put his dick in her face. “Open your mouth.”

She did.

And then she bit him. There was something satisfying about going to the root of your problem.

Gage made an inhuman noise and used her Pip-Boy on his arm to bash her around the face to get her off. He scrambled away, finding a stimpak in a drawer. He was crying. “You bitch, you fucking bitch,” he was sobbing over and over.

She was dizzy but the Med-X was still in her, numbing her up.

She was numb. She could get out of the cuffs, she realized. She broke her left thumb and something in her stomach turned at the sight but the blood and lessened circumference helped her yank her wrist free of the cuff. Having one wrist free meant the other was free of the headboard, though still wearing a cuff.

She ran to him where he was watching his body mend and whipped him across the face with the loose end of the handcuff. Neither of them were armed, nearest guns were off the platform that the bed was on and might as well have been miles away.

_Come on, you piece of shit, kill me. Get mad. Kill me._

She tried to hit him in the groin but he blocked the hit with his arm and slammed the Pip-Boy into the side of her head with his other arm.

White then black and the room was tumbling around her.

He tried to hit her again but she was stumbling around so strangely that the Pip-Boy slammed into the counter. The next hit landed.

He was going to beat her to death with her own Pip-Boy, she realized.

And in a crackling flash of energy, there was X6. Right beside the bed.

She looked up at him from the floor, bewildered. He stared at both of them and they stared back.

“What the fuck!” said Gage, X6 dashed forward, as if him talking had broken the strange spell that had held them. He barrelled into him. Which wasn’t like him. X6-88 didn’t barrel into people, he shot them. But he slammed into him hard enough to get Gage off his feet, up and over the back of the couch.

X6 hopped over the couch and was shooting now, sometimes stomping.

“You piece of shit,” X6 was saying. The venom in his voice was like nothing she’d ever heard from him before. He’d cursed in her presence before, but it was never emotional.

“Don’t...X6, don’t kill him!” she finally managed to shriek at him.

“Why not?” he asked, his voice astounded.

“He has a kill switch somewhere. Other people will die if he does! Bomb collars,” she said in a rush. “He’ll kill them if I leave!”

X6-88 looked at her for a moment.

“Other people don’t matter,” he said, shooting one more time.

Finally satisfied, he leaned down, unlatching her Pip-Boy with its broken screen from Gage’s limp arm.

After holstering his weapon, X6-88 closed the distance between them with a stimpak in one hand, her Pip-Boy in the other. The stimpak hit her blood and she felt her head clear, her thumb right itself.

“We’re going to get you out of here immediately, ma’am,” he said, covering her with his coat. His shirt underneath was a stark white. “Is it safe to pick you up?

“Yes,” she wept hysterically.

“X6-88, ready to Relay with Nora directly to Medical Bay.”

X6 had her in a medical bed and Dr. Volkert and two Gen 2 synths were on hand immediately.

“No...no I have to go back. They’ll die!” she was screaming as Volkert pressed an orange scanner to her forehead, swiping it across.

“Not Med-X, she’s addicted to it,” he said, checking the readout on his scanner. “We’re going to use a different pain killer. We have a different opiate here, don’t worry, just as effective” he said, getting an IV into her arm. He was leaning over to his synth nurses and saying things like ‘sepsis’ and ‘buried in the bone’. “You’re dehydrated, too. I need you to try and breathe, ma’am, deep breaths. In and out. Please try to calm down.”

She took ragged breaths, looking around. “Where’s X6?” she asked, her voice hitching in a strange, sudden panic.

“Who?”

“The man who brought me here! The courser!”

“Oh! The courser,” Volkert frowned and looked about, like he’d never thought of how to make a courser come to him before.

“I want X6!” she yelled, near screaming.

“Yes, ma’am, I’m here,” X6 appeared again, coming to her bedside. “What did you need?”

She gripped his wrist. “Thank you. Thank you.” She pressed her forehead to the back of his hand. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure, ma’am.”

“I have to go back,” she said weakly, feeling a sedative sliding into her.

After staring at her for a moment, X6 got down on his knees by the bed, speaking to her quietly. “You’re never going back there,” said X6, his voice sounding abnormal, intense.

“The traders--” she panted, upset but suddenly sleepy.

“It doesn’t matter if a hundred people will die. Or a thousand. You’re the most important person in the world.”

And then Nora fell unconscious.

\-------

She awoke, seeing a shape by her bed in the dark. “X6?”

“No, Mother. It’s me. Shaun.”

_Ugh._

“I want X6,” she said weakly, surprised by the sound of her own voice. It was so hoarse.

“Lights up twenty percent,” came X6’s voice. The room was now a dark rich blue and there was X6, leaning against the door. “I’m here, ma’am.”

“Mother. I’m glad to see you’re doing well,” said the bearded old man that was her son.

Well? She guessed she did feel well. Well-er. She was clean, someone had washed her and changed her into an Institute jumper, her hair wrapped up in a towel like she was at the spa. But tired.

“What was wrong with me?” she asked.

There had been a lot wrong with Nora. Other pieces of her power armor had been lodged in her leg and the bone had knit together incorrectly, the stimpak’s work disturbed by the incredible amount of drugs that had been in her body at the time. The remnants of her armor had been repeatedly poisoning her, no matter how many stimpaks she took.

And at the end of it all, when she was still asleep, they finally gave her Addictol. Had she really been addicted? She couldn’t tell amid the pain of everything else if she’d been suffering withdrawals.

X6 brought her a glass of water and tapped something on the bed that made it prop her up. She drank it eagerly.

“The medicine they gave you may have left you residually thirsty,” said Shaun. “Even with the IV.”

“Okay,” she murmured.

“How did you come to be there? I want to understand,” said Shaun.

X6 fidgeted a little, like he wanted to say something. It looked like checking his nails.

“I heard people needed help there. I was sent to kill the raiders....it’s a long story, Shaun,” she said tiredly.

“Sir, I think your mother may be too tired to answer questions,” said X6.

Shaun looked at him, looked thoughtful and then nodded a little. “Of course. Come along, X6, we’ll let her rest.”

X6 looked hesitant but then followed Father out.

\-----

Nora showered, the hottest water the system would allow streaming down on her. She’d been in the shower for two hours now.

Clutching her hair, Nora sank down to the bottom of the shower and screamed.

She screamed and screamed.

After she drew her hand down her face, clawing it, pain blazing out in trails behind it.

“Don’t do that,” said a calm voice, grasping her wrists carefully. “Please.”

“Let go!” she screamed at him. “Let me! Let me!” They were lucky she was too distraught to fight, all her effort devoted to screaming and crying and pouring everything out.

X6-88’s arms slid under her knees and shoulders, lifting her from the bottom of the shower.

“You hate getting wet,” she sobbed softly.

He smiled a little. “I don’t care right now,” he said, setting her on her bed. He pushed the black, wet hair from her face.

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t owe anyone an apology,” X6-88 said.

“You said that to me before. When I was helping Jack Cabot,” she sniffled.

“I recall. You didn’t owe those people an apology. You hadn’t done anything wrong then. You absolutely haven’t done anything wrong now.”

She was quiet for a time, listening to the sound of him breathing, letting it soothe her.

“How did you find me?”

“Your Pip-Boy. We detected a deterioration in the signal. I came to check on you. I was expecting to simply bring you and your Pip-Boy back for maintenance.”

In the fight, her Pip-Boy must have gotten damaged enough to throw off the courser chip inside.

“X6...when you found me. I’d decided it was over. That I was going to die there. I was going to make him kill me.”

He was quiet.

“I have to go back. The traders...they’ll be killed.”

She felt something on her head and then felt it drift down. It was his hand. He was stroking her hair.

“The others will come looking for me. To take me back. I have to go back.”

He kept petting her.

“They’re all waiting for me.”

“You don’t have to die to escape,” said X6-88.

“What?” What was he saying?

“You were trying to escape. All of their grabbing hands, not just the hands of that piece of shit. All of them. You don’t have to die. You can just walk away. Say ‘no’. Dying is not the answer to this problem.” His voice was quiet and had a soothing quality to it.

“Actually,” she said quietly. “I think dying is the answer.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise (???). I wanted to write something where I could understand it if Nora went The Institute route.  
> I can end things here or keep going, let me know if you want more. 
> 
> Comments, please? I'd really, really appreciate them.
> 
> Also let me know if you want drawings of anything in particular.


End file.
